University of Central Florida
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Raising Cybersecurity Awareness in Central Florida Communities
No full textThe threat of cyberattacks is larger than ever. As our lives move further into the digital age, attackers become smarter, learn new techniques, and exploit subtler vulnerabilities. If we want to train a generation that is protected from these threats, it is our responsibility to start educating people early, not just after they enter the workforce.
To do this, I partnered with a non-profit student organization called the Collegiate Cyber Defense Club, better known as Hack@UCF, to teach the UCF student body and others in the Central Florida area about cybersecurity. Our focus was on both understanding modern threats and taking practical steps so personal data, accounts, and devices stay protected against malicious actors. Reaching this goal required a coordinated effort between myself and several fellow students, including weekly informational meetings on campus and hands-on cyber training. The largest of these events was the Horse Plinko Cyber Challenge (HPCC), a live cyberattack simulation that lets students experience the value of cybersecurity in a realistic yet safe environment.https://stars.library.ucf.edu/hip-2025fall/1051/thumbnail.jp
Leading Change, Saving Lives: The Leadership Behind the National Marrow Donor Program
No full textAs part of the LEAD Scholar Academy service-learning project, our group partnered with the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving lives through cell therapy and bone marrow donation. The purpose of our project was to support NMDP’s mission of expanding the marrow donor registry and to explore how leadership principles can be applied through meaningful community engagement.
Our volunteer work included assembling and labeling swab kits, assisting with donor registration drives, and educating UCF students about the importance of joining the registry. Through these activities, we not only contributed to lifesaving outreach efforts but also gained firsthand insight into how collaboration and civic responsibility strengthen communities.
Throughout this experience, we connected classroom concepts – particularly the Social Change Model of Leadership – to real-world service. We observed how values such as commitment and citizenship are demonstrated through teamwork, advocacy, and consistent effort toward a common goal. Ultimately, this project deepened our understanding of leadership as service, showing that small actions, when combined with shared purpose, can have a lasting and meaningful impact.https://stars.library.ucf.edu/hip-2025fall/1047/thumbnail.jp
Making the Invisible Visible: Cultivating Contexts for Equitable Workloads
No full textWomen make up the majority of degree earners and most of those teaching at higher education institutions. Yet, women are not advancing to the highest ranks. How female faculty receive credit for their work may account for the discrepancy in women advancing to the highest ranks. This single-institution case study explored institutional practices and policies as they related to workload satisfaction and rewards for female faculty. Following the framework from the Faculty Workload and Rewards Project, FWRP, the case used the constructs of equity-minded faculty workloads to shape the analysis. Three themes emerged in the analysis: context matters, transparency practices, and clarity of benchmarks. The study revealed that institutional practices and policies shape workload satisfaction and rewards for female faculty
The role of switching costs in the triangle of complaint behavior, satisfaction, and switching behavior in the hotel context
No full textThe influence of switching costs could play an important role that prevents dissatisfied cus- tomers from switching to another service provider, particularly in the highly competitive hotel market. Drawing on Hirschman’s model of customers’ reactions to service failures (1970), this study investigated the moderating effect of switching costs on the inter-relationships between complaint behavior, customer satisfaction, and switching behavior for hotel guests. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed via Amazon Mechanical Turk and yielded a total of 1,135 responses from travelers who stayed in US hotels and experienced service failures. The results of this study revealed that switching costs did influence hotel guests’ switching behavior, such that switching costs moderated the relationship between their sat- isfaction and switching behavior. This study produced new knowledge about the moderating effects of switching costs as applied to the Hirschman’s model in the hotel context, thus extending the model’s application. The findings also provided insights for hotel practitioners regarding the causes of customers’ switching behavior, which could help develop and en- hance strategies related to appropriate service recovery, increasing customer satisfaction, and revisiting intentions, which are essential for hotel profitability
Atomic Layer Deposition As A Method Of Modifying Sintering Behavior Of Nanopowders
No full textNanocrystalline ceramics promise superior mechanical, electrical and optical properties, yet their fabrication is impeded by a lack of scalable manufacturing methods. This thesis explores atomic layer deposition (ALD) as an enabler to manufacturing nanocrystalline ceramics. Chapter 1 frames the scientific and industrial motivation for combining traditional sintering methods with ALD, highlighting the challenges involved in nanocrystalline ceramics manufacturing, and the opportunities that lie in the combination of the two techniques. Chapter 2 surveys the state-of-the-art in nanocrystalline ceramics manufacturing, powder ALD chemistry and reactor design. Three challenges of powder ALD are highlighted and a critical comparison of fluidized-bed versus rotary-bed reactors sets the stage for new hardware solutions. To address these challenges, Chapter 3 details the design and construction of a hybrid fluidized/rotary ALD reactor equipped with in situ quadrupole mass spectrometry. The system accommodates both “A/B powders” and “C/D powders” (based on Geldart’s classification scheme), while maintaining uniform precursor exposure and minimal agglomeration. Chapter 4 demonstrates the impact of ultrathin ALD Al₂O₃ coating on 60 nm ZnO nanopowders hot-pressed at 850 °C under 150 MPa. Relative to the uncoated control ceramic with a grain size of 2.76 ± 0.50 μm, a 1 nm coating suppresses grain growth to 89 ± 23 nm in partially densified regions, while a 10 nm coating further limits grains to 55 ± 7 nm. Chapter 5 concludes that ALD enables sub-nanometer precision control of grain-boundary chemistry and opens a scalable path toward dense, nanocrystalline ceramics using conventional sintering techniques. This work lays the foundation for future work in the field of ceramics manufacturing, where full densification of nanocrystalline ceramics with additional functionalities can be made possible via ALD-enabled grain boundary engineering
Beam-Clip: Multimodal Alignment For Mmwave Beam Pattern Learning
No full textThis thesis presents a novel approach to beam prediction in wireless communication systems using a multimodal masked CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training). We introduce a two-phase training methodology that first aligns representations across multiple sensor modalities—GPS, Radar, LiDAR, and RGB images—through masked contrastive learning, followed by task-specific fine-tuning for channel power reconstruction. Our approach adapts CLIP’s pre-training strategy to the domain of wireless signal modeling, enabling the model to learn rich, transferable features that capture the spatial and contextual dependencies of the beam distribution. Notably, the pre-training stage provides a substantial boost to overall performance, significantly improving the model\u27s ability to infer full beam pattern characteristics. Experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms traditional approaches, particularly in Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) conditions, where the learned multimodal embeddings enhance the model’s ability to reason about occluded or indirect signal paths. These findings suggest that multimodal masked CLIP not only strengthens beam prediction accuracy but also provides a robust foundation for real-world mmWave communication scenarios where environmental variability are prevalent
Algorithms And Benchmarking For Parallel Identity-By-Descent Segment Detection
No full textAs genomic biobank initiatives continue to grow, the availability of large-scale genotype datasets, encompassing hundreds of thousands to millions of individuals, has transformed genetic research and biomedical discovery. However, the sheer volume of this data presents major computational barriers. Efficient and scalable methods are urgently needed to process and extract meaningful signals from biobank-scale data using modern multi-core architectures. One central task in this domain is the detection of identity-by-descent (IBD) segments, which underpins a range of applications including genealogical inference, disease mapping, phasing, and population structure analysis.
This dissertation addresses these challenges by presenting a sequence of contributions that combine rigorous benchmarking, novel algorithm design, and high-performance implementation. First, we construct a comprehensive and reproducible benchmarking framework to evaluate the performance, accuracy, and resource efficiency of widely used IBD detection tools. This benchmark provides a clear picture of how different algorithms behave under real-world biobank conditions and serves as a guide for researchers seeking the most appropriate tool for their analytical goals.
Second, we introduce HP-PBWT, the first haplotype-based parallel implementation of the positional Burrows-Wheeler transform (PBWT). Unlike traditional PBWT based tools that process haplotypes serially, HP-PBWT exploits haplotype-based parallelism to leverage modern multi-core CPUs, dramatically reducing runtime while maintaining the core mathematical structure of PBWT. This work bridges the gap between classical algorithmic theory and practical scalability on modern hardware.
Finally, we develop RaPID2, an improved IBD detection tool that incorporates both performance-oriented engineering and algorithmic adaptability. RaPID2 integrates fixed-size and dynamic window modes, applies memory-efficient representations, and introduces multiple levels of task parallelism. It replicates the detection power of its predecessor, RaPID, while achieving significant speedups-up to 32-fold faster in high-resolution settings. Compared to other popular tools like hap-IBD, RaPID2 delivers competitive accuracy with dramatically improved runtime at moderate IBD thresholds such as 2 cM.
Together, these contributions demonstrate how high-performance computing principles can be harnessed to meet the demands of modern genomics. The tools and frameworks developed in this dissertation are released as open-source software, enabling transparent evaluation and future integration into large-scale genetic studies
Multi-omics analysis of streptococcus pneumoniae serotype 3 using a murine infection model
No full textStreptococcus pneumoniae (SPN), a gram-positive encapsulated pathogen, inhabits the human nasopharynx asymptomatically but can cause severe infections, including invasive pneumococcal diseases (IPD). Although targeted by vaccines, serotype 3 (ST3) remains highly prevalent within the United States and globally. Sequence type 180 lineage within Clonal Complex (CC)180 is the predominant lineage of serotype 3 globally. Genetically, Clonal Complex 180 is divided into clade I and II, with clade II recently surpassing clade I in prevalence. However, the molecular mechanisms driving this shift remain poorly understood. Here, we employ a multi-omics approach, combining pangenome analysis and dual-RNA sequencing, to investigate genetic factors critical for virulence, invasiveness, and colonization in a murine sepsis model. Pan-transcriptomic analysis identified clade II-specific accessory genes associated with antibiotic resistance to macrolides, tetracyclines, and chloramphenicol, as well as mobile genetic elements and toxin-antitoxin systems (pezAT and AbiE), highlighting putative mechanisms enhancing clade II survival within the host. Dual-RNASeq profiling during clade I systemic infection identified critical bacterial factors, including surface-anchored proteins (BgaA, PavB, PhtD, eno), metal-binding proteins (PsaA, ZmpABC, AdcA), pyruvate oxidase (SpxB), and endopeptidase (PepO) essential for host colonization and invasion. Host immune responses revealed distinct molecular pathways mediating pneumococcus infection. These findings highlight critical molecular targets and virulence factors, paving the way for innovative therapeutic strategies and next-generation vaccines to combat the persistent threat of serotype 3 S. pneumoniae
Attitudes Towards Conventional And Unconventional Healthcare Among Young Adults, And Personality Variables That Predict Usage Of Complementary And Alternative Medicine (Cam)
No full textIn this study, I examined the correlations between conventional and unconventional
healthcare attitudes of young adults attending the University of Central Florida and their levels of
physician trust and the Big Five personality variables of openness, agreeableness, neuroticism,
conscientiousness, and extraversion. I used an online survey method and 300 participants
provided data for this study. This was an exploratory study with the goal of determining if young
adults (i.e., college students) valued conventional versus unconventional healthcare more.
Participants completed a general demographic questionnaire, followed by scales I specifically
had created for this study to assess various aspects of their attitudes toward both types of
healthcare. They also completed the Big Five questionnaire as well as a scale that assessed the
construct of social desirability (the latter scale served the purpose of gauging and controlling for
participants’ tendency to respond to study items in a way that would reflect favorably of them. It
was found that, overall, participants expressed a preference for conventional healthcare
significantly more than unconventional healthcare. Also, on average, women and Blacks (or
African Americans)—though also preferring conventional types of healthcare, were significantly
more open to utilizing unconventional forms of healthcare. Possible explanations for these
findings are discussed
Race, Gender, and Survival: Disparities in ICU Post-Resuscitation Care and Neurological Outcomes Following Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest
No full textBackground: Racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare are well-documented, yet the intersection of race, gender, and critical care remains underexplored. This study focuses on disparities in intensive care unit (ICU) treatment and outcomes for Black women, particularly in cases involving out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), neurocritical care, and post-cardiac arrest treatment. Black women often face systemic barriers that influence the quality and timeliness of life-saving care, contributing to poorer outcomes.
Methods: A scoping review was conducted to examine peer-reviewed literature from the past decade using databases such as PubMed, CINAHL, and ScienceDirect. Studies were selected based on their focus on ICU-level care and outcomes related to race, ethnicity, and gender within the United States. Articles were reviewed and synthesized to identify patterns in disparities in the chain of survival, clinical decision-making, ICU treatment, and outcome disparities.
Results: The review revealed consistent disparities in ICU treatment for Black women. These included less bystander CPR, delayed access to neurocritical interventions, lower rates of life-sustaining treatments, early DNR and WLST and poorer neurological outcomes. Contributing factors included implicit bias and broader systematic and socioeconomic inequities. The lack of disaggregated data by both race and gender was also a notable gap in the existing literature.
Conclusions: This study highlights the crucial need to address intersecting disparities in ICU care, particularly for women of color. By centering Black women in the analysis of, this research fills a gap in the literature and offers evidence to support more equitable and culturally responsive critical care practices. Findings may inform policy reforms, improve provider education, and contribute to reducing disparities in high-stakes medical settings and Black communities.
Keywords: racial disparities, ethnic disparities, ICU care, Black women, post-cardiac arrest, health equity, critical care outcomes, neurological outcomes, gender and race, OHCA, Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arres